


For Lack Of Better Words

by cappedbicuspid



Series: Good Omens Shorts [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ficlet, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 06:10:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20077447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cappedbicuspid/pseuds/cappedbicuspid
Summary: Literally speaking, ineffable means unspeakable, and everything that Crowley is feeling is beyond his understanding of words.





	For Lack Of Better Words

**Author's Note:**

> A request by Tumblr user shadowofaghost5.

He'd screamed for Her countless times before. More times than he cared to recall, he shouted at the sky and he hated everything about it. He hollered and yelled and willed an answer and he received exactly what he expected: nothing. 

Only once did he really cry. 

He'd been standing there with Aziraphale, Aziraphale spoke (_I'll never talk to you again_, he said, and Crowley feared they'd never be able to talk again if he didn't come up with something), and he looked up. He prayed, silent and brief and scared. It was a plea, not a demand, and thus, She answered. 

He didn't recall exactly what he'd begged for. His angel. Don't take his angel, he was sure. Maybe he begged for an answer. In the heat of the moment, he didn't consider what he was saying or what he was asking for. He knew only that he received it. She didn't take his angel and sitting in a chair in his home, he could have cried for Her again. 

_Ineffable_ was a good word for it. The word reached its height of use somewhere about the nineteenth century, when Aziraphale must have been saying it an awful lot, because it caught on. People got to talking about it. You see, _ineffable_ comes from the Latin root _effari_, meaning _utter_. _Ineffable_ derives directly from Latin _effabilis_, meaning able to be uttered. _Ineffable_, in the literal sense, meant _unspeakable_. And that's what Crowley'd frustration was, ineffable and unspeakable. __

_ __ _

_ __ _

There were no mortal words to describe the tight, hot coil in his chest. She'd answer when he called to save Aziraphale, but never before? Would She again? Was it only to save the angel? 

He ran his hands over his face and groaned, because the hot coil filled a centuries-old void. It wasn't all anger. Not entirely. No, there was a fondness. 

She answered him. She saved his angel, the one thing he couldn't live without. If he hadn't known better, Crowley would've assumed that he felt like She may have loved him again, for just a second. She put the one thing that he couldn't have right in front of him and preserved it when he needed it most. Or rather, maybe he'd rather been saying, She saved the one thing that he loved the most, the one man he couldn't live without. 

He wanted to be angry. He did. But he couldn't. There was a hotness and a soft warmth coiled up together in his chest and cold tear-streaks down his face, all wrought in white-hot frustration. He wanted to understand, but very well, he knew that he couldn't. 

It was all, for lack of a better word, ineffable.


End file.
